Library of Congress to preserve first-ever audio message sent from space

The first-ever audio message that was sent from space occurred on December 19, 1958 when President Dwight Eisenhower said, "America's wish for peace on Earth and goodwill toward men everywhere." The message was broadcast from the world's first communications satellite called the Project Signal Communications by Orbiting Relay Equipment (SCORE). Now, the Library of Congress will be preserving that audio message.

The audio message will be preserved as part of the National Recording Registry at the Library of Congress, and will sit alongside other classic audio recordings, such as Pink Floyd's "The Dark Side of the Moon," Simon and Garfunkel's "Sounds of Silence," and Chubby Checker's "The Twist," which are some of the most popular pieces of music within the last several decades.

Eisenhower's message is one out of the 25 recordings selected for induction into the National Recording Registry in 2012. Other recordings include "Saturday Night Fever" from The Bee Gees and "Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto, No. 1." by Van Cliburn. These pieces were chosen based on their "cultural, artistic, and historic importance and relevance to the aural legacy of the United States."

While Project SCORE was the world's first communications satellite in space, it wasn't the first-ever satellite to make it to space. The world's first-ever satellite in space was famously the Sputnik 1, which was launched on October 4, 1957, with the US's first satellite being the Explorer 1, which launched on January 31, 1958.